Burns And Shooting Stars
by mandaree1
Summary: When a sixteen year old Mabel comes strutting through the door in her infamous 'go big or go home' sweater, Dipper knows immediately that she's done something that's either awesome or illegal. It's kind of both, it turns out.


**Disclaimer: I don't own Gravity Falls**

 **Title: Burns And Shooting Stars**

 **Summary: When a sixteen year old Mabel comes strutting through the door in her infamous 'go big or go home' sweater, Dipper knows immediately that she's done something that's awesome or illegal. It's kind of both, it turns out.**

 **Warnings: Teenage Pines. Mentions of various body piercings, felonies, and tattoos.**

 **...**

Dipper isn't tipped off by the huge smirk on Mabel's face. It isn't the way she skips through the door, her bobbed brown hair bouncing gleefully. It isn't even the shout of triumph when their folks leave the room after successfully lying about her whereabouts for the past day or so.

No. What sends him into alert is her wearing her specially made, 'go big or go home' sweater; of which he's only seen her wear a total of three times now, and one of those times included getting arrested. Ergo, righteous concern flows through him.

All throughout dinner, Mabel smiles at him, eyes big and shining like twin stars dipped in super glitter. 'I did something bad', the look tells him, 'and I loved it.' It's all he can do to ignore her, keep a mostly believable conversation going, and excuse himself to their shared room after he finishes. They technically have separate rooms, of course, but they still tended to gravitate towards Mabel's bedroom- complete with two beds, two desks, and an imaginary territory line- when there aren't any date nights or sleepovers in progress, if only to fight off the nightmares. One room filled with screams is plenty.

Mabel prances into the room not much later, smile still on her face.

"What did you do?" Is the first thing out of his mouth. Dipper crosses his arms in hopes of looking more menacing, leaning against the backboard of his bed, legs sprawled out in front of him.

His sister waved her sweater sleeves at him, tongue sticking out playfully. She kicks her feet in the air while she's at it, balancing haphazardly to make sure she doesn't fall over. "Guess."

"Are the police going to be knocking on our door within the next week or so?"

"Pffbt. Please. I couldn't do anything illegal without my bro around to back me up."

That's true. Dipper's been arrested once or twice, and has evaded arrest more than his fair share of times as well. "Touche."

"Guess again!" She cries eagerly, bouncing on her feet. Dipper raises an eyebrow.

"Was protection involved?"

That made her stop. " _Ew,_ Dipper! No."

" _Should_ it have been involved?" He asks with a smirk. It's fun to make her blush, even if he knows his face is copying the action.

"Dipper, I'm not a dum-dum. Of course not."

"Okay." He shrugs. "I give up."

"Lookie!" She hurriedly begins to remove the dreaded sweater that had made him suspicious in the first place. Dipper covers his eyes- the gentlemanly thing to do- but Mabel snorts. "I'm wearing an undershirt, doofus. Relax."

He hesitantly pulls his hand away from his eyes and awkwardly adjusts his hat. Mabel shows him her right side and throws the 'go big or go home' shirt to the side melodramatically. "Ta-da!"

The skin is blotchy and red, but Dipper barely notices. His eyes are drawn to the familiar blue mark on her shoulder.

It's a tattoo.

Of Stan's scar.

She got a tattoo of the one thing on the planet that looked like a tattoo but wasn't actually a tattoo.

He sits there in flabbergasted silence a long moment, trying to process, before finally speaking; "That's still illegal, you know. You need adult permission to get a tattoo. Mom and dad would never let you do this."

Mabel rolls her eyes. "Fake I.D. Duh."

That's not a difficult feat to pull of, really. Mabel's tall for her age. Heck, she's tall for a _girl_ , period. She could easily say she was older than she really was and not be questioned, unlike Dipper, the smaller twin, who has resigned himself to eye-level for the rest of his days.

It occurs to him that he should probably ask where she got the cash to get a tattoo in the first place, but quickly comes to the conclusion that he doesn't want to know. "It's, uh, cool? I guess? I never saw you as the tattoo type."

 _Or the piercing type_ , Dipper reminds himself, ignoring the silver ring in Mabel's belly. He's already certain she's wearing her lucky teddy bear one. Not that he can complain, wearing the tiniest gauges known to man. He loves the look, but he doesn't want to look like one of those crazy people on the internet, you know? Not to mention the star-shaped nose ring she only wore out of the house, which is currently glimmering in its usual place. She must have put it on after dinner.

"Eh." Mabel shrugs. He wonders if it hurts to do so. "I just wanted to get a little something in honor of our very own grunkle Stan. The design probably isn't the exact same, but it's the thought that counts, right?" She gives him a wide grin. "You oughta get one for Ford! I bet he'd like that!"

 _I bet he wouldn't_. " _Some_ of us want to wait until we're legal until we get our skin marked up permanently." Not to say he doesn't want one. He does. More than one, actually. "You know it's only going to stretch that much sooner, since you're still growing, right?"

"Dunno. Don't care." Then, after a slight pause. "Two, actually. I got two; all by myself. What, too scared to give it a try?"

Her tone changes from somber to teasing within a few key seconds. Dipper did the good brother thing and ignored the shift; if only to save her ego. "Of course not."

"Want me to hold your hand? Get you a lollipop?"

"Hold my hand, no. But I'm always open to sugar." He looks her over. Mabel is beaming at him, rather proudly, about her little indiscretion. " _Two_ tattoos?"

She falters, smile fading. "Uh, yeah. I got two."

"Can I see?" He asks gently. His sister is wild and open, but she has her demons like everyone else. They just happen to be mostly shared between them. If she doesn't want to do something, she doesn't have to.

"Sure." She states flatly, turning on her feet. He catches a glimpse of a scar or two on her bare arms and shoulders. Most of them, thankfully, are easy to hide, so he can't see them at this angle. No one ever said magic and delinquency wasn't dangerous.

On her left shoulder, carved in darker ink that gave the image an older feel- the splotches on her arm, however, signal otherwise- was a shooting star made of dull colors.

"It's, you know." She mumbles quietly, biting her lip. "For all we went through."

"No." He says firmly, a moment later. "It's for all _you_ went through." Mabel's demons had their own thing going on, after all. A little memorial of her prison and the lesson behind it isn't a half-bad idea. "I love it, Mabes."

Her mouth twitches upwards in the semblance of a grin. "Yeah, me too."

They share a smile, but then Dipper groans and buries his head in his hands. "Dangit, Mabel. Now I can't even be mad."

"I'm good like that." Mabel hums as she pulls the dreaded sweater over the little reminders.

 **Author's Note: Delinquent teenage Pines for the win. You can't tell me they won't take after both of their grunkles. (Any and all big crimes are carefully planned out and executed beforehand, with little charts and everything; it's the unforeseen factors that gets them caught.)**

 **I feel like these kids are gonna go through a big teenage-delinquent phase, if only to offset, well, you know, the memory of going to war and bein forced to grow up before their thirteenth birthday. Let them have their fun.**

 **-Also, the star nose ring was suggested by a friend of mine. They mentioned the idea and I just had to. I promised a shoutout, and here it is. Hey. =)**

 **No flames! Don't like don't read! Review!**


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